You slept 7 hours. Maybe 8. You're not hungover. You're not sick. But you woke up and something just feels... off. Heavy. Like you're operating at 60% and you don't know why. Most men blame sleep. Or stress. Or "just being busy." But the real reason has nothing to do with any of that.
I know because it happened to me this morning. This morning was electric. I was in the zone. Building. Onboarding a new client, structuring his programme, mapping out content, firing on all cylinders. You know those mornings where everything flows? Ideas arriving faster than you can capture them. Momentum building on itself. That feeling where you're creating from a place that almost doesn't feel like effort.
I was riding that wave for hours. Outputting at a level that felt effortless.
Then something shifted.
I couldn't tell you the exact moment. But at some point, the energy changed. The flow stopped. I went from creating to forcing. The ideas that were arriving freely an hour ago suddenly felt like I was pulling them through mud. I tried to push through... kept building, kept working, kept telling myself to stay locked in...
And I got worse.
Not because I stopped being talented. Not because the work got harder. Because my frequency dropped. The signal changed. And everything followed.
Most men would just push through. More coffee. More willpower. Force the output. And they'd produce mediocre work from a depleted state and call it "grinding."
I've learned a different approach.
I shut the laptop. Left the house. Drove to the gym.
I. The signal drop
Every man experiences this. Most just don't have a name for it.
You're operating well. Work is flowing. Conversations are landing. You feel sharp, present, locked in. Then, gradually or suddenly, the frequency shifts. The output goes from effortless to forced. The creativity dries up. The sharpness dulls. You're still sitting at the same desk, doing the same work, but it's like someone turned the dial down on your entire operating system.
That's The Signal Drop. And what you do in that moment determines everything...
Most men push through. More coffee. More zynz. More willpower. Forcing output from a body that's already checked out. They grind out mediocre work and wonder why it all feels hollow by the end of the week.
It's not a discipline problem. It's a frequency problem. Your nervous system. Not your thoughts. Not your intentions. Your actual physical state... that's what runs the show.
When that system is regulated, everything flows. When it's depleted, the signal distorts. You're still the same person. Same skills. Same knowledge. But you're operating from a different frequency entirely. And everything responds accordingly... the work, the people around you, even your dog.
II. The 60-Minute Reset Protocol
I walked into the gym feeling flat. Low hum. That familiar heaviness where your body is there but your presence isn't.
Step 1: Zone 2 cardio (30 minutes). Incline walk. Heart rate in the sweet spot where your body starts to recalibrate. This is where most men go wrong , they think a reset means smashing a heavy session, going to war with the weights, punishing themselves back into a good mood. That's not a reset. That's avoidance with extra steps. Zone 2 is low enough that your nervous system starts to downregulate. Your breathing slows. Your mind stops racing. The thoughts that were tangled start to separate.
Twenty minutes in, I could already feel the shift. Not dramatically. Subtly. Like the static clearing on a radio.
Step 2: Sauna (15–20 minutes). Nothing I've found replicates what sauna does to your nervous system. The heat forces your body into a controlled stress response. Your heart rate rises. You breathe deeper. Every bit of tension you've been carrying - the shallow breathing, the tight shoulders, the clenched jaw you didn't even know was clenched... starts to release.
Step 3: Cold plunge (3 minutes). That's where the real magic happens. The contrast between extreme heat and extreme cold does something to your system that I genuinely cannot describe until you've felt it. Your body goes from stress to recovery to stress to recovery in rapid succession. And each cycle, it gets better at finding calm. Your cortisol drops. Your dopamine baseline resets. Your vagal tone improves. Your breathing is deeper than it's been all day.
Step 4: Sit. Breathe. No phone. (5 minutes). I sat there after the plunge, just present. And I could feel it happen in real time. The heaviness lifting. The clarity returning. Not like flipping a switch. More like the fog lifting. Slow at first, then suddenly clear.
By the time I walked out, I was a completely different person to the one who'd walked in an hour earlier. The ideas that had dried up were flowing again. The motivation I'd been trying to force was just there - naturally, without effort. Not because anything external changed. Because my internal state shifted.
Same body. Different frequency. The signal cleaned itself up.
III. Why this matters more than discipline
People get this completely wrong about productivity, about success, about all of it. They think it's about what you do. It's not. It's about the state you're in when you do it.
Two hours from a clean signal will outperform eight from a depleted one. Every time.
This morning proved it. The work I produced in those first few hours... flowing, creative, effortless - wasn't because I was "trying harder." It was because my signal was clean. My nervous system was supporting me instead of fighting me.
And this is the thing most men refuse to accept... you can't think your way out of a fried nervous system. You can't discipline past it either.
You have to move. You have to reset. You have to give your body what it needs to recalibrate - and then the mind follows.
But most men never learn this. Here's the pattern I see constantly. Man wakes up. Checks phone. Cortisol spikes before his feet hit the floor. Drinks coffee to override the fatigue his body is screaming about. Sits at his desk. Forces output for hours. Feels the energy drop. Drinks more coffee. Forces more output. Gets home. Scrolls to "decompress." Sleeps poorly because his nervous system is still wired. Wakes up. Repeats.
And he calls this productivity. It's not. It's a survival loop.
One of my clients, Waseem, was running this exact pattern when he came to me. Overweight, low energy, forcing everything. The first thing we addressed wasn't his training or his diet. It was his nervous system. We built the reset protocol into his week before we touched a barbell. Within 90 days he'd lost 20 kilos - but that was just the surface. The real shift was that he stopped forcing and started flowing. His output at work doubled. His relationships improved. His energy was unrecognisable. Not because he suddenly found more discipline. Because his signal changed, and everything downstream followed.
IV. The Framework
Here's the loop. Four steps. Remember them.
Read the signal. Learn to recognise The Signal Drop in real time. Track the moments when you shift from flowing to forcing. When the work goes from effortless to heavy. When the ideas stop arriving and you start pulling. That's not a signal to try harder. That's your nervous system telling you it's depleted.
Step away. Most men's instinct is to push harder. That makes it worse. The moment you recognise the drop, stop. Close the laptop. Leave the environment. Don't negotiate with the part of you that says "just one more hour." That voice is your depleted nervous system trying to justify its own dysfunction.
Reset the body. Move. Zone 2 cardio. Sauna. Cold water. Even just five minutes of slow nasal breathing... four seconds in, six seconds out will start to shift things. The key is: you cannot think your way back to a clean signal. The body has to move first. The mind follows.
Return clean. Come back to the work from a different frequency. You'll do more in two hours clean than you would've done in eight depleted. That's where it stacks.
Read the signal. Step away. Reset the body. Return clean.
That's it. That's the skill nobody teaches you. And it changes everything.
V. The compound effect
The men who understand this have an unfair advantage. Because the hours they work actually count. Their presence hits different. Their output hits different. People feel it before a word's been spoken.
I've seen this compound over months and years. The man who manages his frequency doesn't just perform better. He attracts differently. Opportunities arrive that wouldn't have appeared when he was operating from baseline stress. Conversations happen that wouldn't have opened up.
You can't fake that. You earn it. Daily. Through the resets. Through understanding that the body isn't separate from the work - it IS the work.
This morning I was creating at a level that felt almost effortless. Then I hit The Signal Drop. Then I went to the gym. Zone 2. Sauna. Cold plunge.
We are so back...
That's not motivation. That's not discipline. That's just knowing how the game actually works.
Ninety days of managing your frequency - sleeping properly, moving daily, resetting when you need to instead of forcing when you don't - and you won't recognise the man looking back at you.
Not because you changed what you do. Because you changed the signal you do it from.
You can just do things. You can just leave the desk when the energy drops. You can just go to the gym in the middle of the day. Nobody is stopping you except the story that says you need to push through.
— Achilles
Sons of Achilles. Free to join. Inside you'll find the nervous system reset protocol I used today, the frequency tracking framework my clients use daily, and a brotherhood of men who hold each other to a higher standard. Link in bio.
